"Residents of two suburban Maryland counties were on the alert today for suspicious signs which might lead police to a masked rapist who has attacked 26 women over the last year. Officials of Prince George's County, which adjoins the District of Columbia, disclosed Friday that massive police efforts to trap the attacker had failed and the public was being called on for help. Police said the man's usual method of operation was to force his way into dwellings, threaten his victims with a knife or gun and assault them He wears Ku Klux Klan type hood, its color and material varying, according to his victims. Completely Clothed He has usually worn gloves and has been so completely clothed that until recently his race or age could not be determined, police said. But this sketchy description was finally compiled: White, in his late teens or early 20s, slender and of medium height. Police said the rapist's victims ranged in age from 18 to 50. When a victim's husband was at home, the husband was tied up and the woman assaulted in another room. Some of the women were beaten, officials said, and their homes burglarized."

Arturo Alva-Moreno Was World Trade Center Victim #2,754. Or Was He?
His daughter is certain he died at the World Trade Center. But as far as the government is concerned, he never even existed
Her father said he worked at the top of the Tower, midway between the ground and the sky. So he must have been in there, somewhere, when the plane hit and the Tower vanished on September 11, 2001.

He wasn’t supposed to be there. Not really. He was an undocumented immigrant. He had no work permit. His papers were forged. But he was definitely there, right at the top. She was sure of it. Where else could he be?

Arturo had told her he washed dishes at Windows on the World, the fancy restaurant at One World Trade Center, up on the 106th floor. He made a few bucks an hour, but he sent cash to Mexico whenever he could. The cash stopped in the second week of September 2001, and there were no more stories from the restaurant at the top of the world. But there was another phone call. The man on the line was from the Mexican Consulate, the one opposite the Chrysler Building. Someone had found Arturo’s wallet in the rubble, hidden beneath the twisted metal and scattered debris. The call confirmed what Laura already knew: Her father died in the World Trade Center.

“Many Mexicans worked in the U.S. under a false name or with a fake ID, which made it difficult for their loved ones to claim them,” Padilla explains. They — the undocumented — worked menial jobs, had no Social Security numbers, got paid in cash, sacrificed their identities. Arturo was part of this underground labor force — one of the invisible, careful not to leave a paper trail. Now, the feds wanted proof he lived in New York — “A document with his name on it, or a witness,” Padilla remembers — or his family wouldn’t receive a death certificate.

Padilla chews over the few clues. “Maybe Arturo was living under a different name like many other illegal immigrants,” he says. “But maybe he didn’t live in New York. Maybe he didn’t die in the 9/11 attacks. Who knows! The family’s payment from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund could’ve reached $7 million. Can you believe that?”

He wonders if Arturo seized an opportunity — the ultimate opportunity — to disappear; if he exploited an American tragedy. “Many people I talked to in New York thought he was alive and living in California,” Padilla says. “I was thinking of searching for him, but I need time and money to do that.”

Seven-year-old Yamato Tanooka of Hokkaido, Japan, was throwing rocks at people during a family outing in summer 2016. His parents wanted to teach him a lesson. So they pulled over by the side of a road next to the woods, removed him from the car, and drove away. They returned five minutes later, hoping that their punishment had worked. But he was already gone.

Yamato remained missing for six days. The woods had tall grass and plants that the search party needed to comb through to be sure that they didn’t miss finding him, in case his body was lying on the ground. It was cold at night, and it also rained, which made it seem even more hopeless to find him alive.

Meanwhile, Yamato truly believed that his parents had abandoned him because of his bad behavior. He decided to go deeper into the woods to look for shelter. After walking for 5 kilometers (3 mi), Yamato came upon an empty military base with small huts. He opened the door of one and found a thin mattress on the floor. He was able to sleep comfortably. But aside from drinking rainwater, he had nothing to eat for six days.

When the search party finally found him, Yamato was taken to the hospital. Aside from hunger and mild hypothermia, he physically recovered.

A man who claimed in a controversial documentary that he was U.S. Special Forces soldier lost during the Vietnam War is an imposter, according to the missing soldier’s family, which cited DNA test results.

In “Unclaimed,” Dang Tan Ngoc alleged he was Army Sgt. 1st Class John Hartley Robertson, who went missing following a helicopter crash over Laos in 1968. The film, which premiered in the U.S. last year at the annual GI Film Festival, evoked impassioned responses from all sides of the POW/MIA issue.

At the time of the documentary, friends and members of Robertson’s family were convinced he was the missing GI. But, it was not to be.

Gail Metcalf, daughter of Robertson’s sole surviving sister, Jean Robertson-Holley, who was featured during an emotional reunion with Ngoc in the film, thanked Faunce and others for bringing Ngoc to their attention, something they have accused the government of neglecting to do. The family members reiterated that they believe the man is an American and will continue to seek his U.S. family.

On July 3, 1990, a traveling portrait photographer from the Vancouver, Washington area walked into a local tavern. He had been in the Roseburg area working at a local store taking family photographs for about two weeks. He invited two women, Tracy Lee Poirier and Tamara Marie Upton, to a game of pool.

The next day the authorities found his naked four foot-four inch body on the Umpqua River near Elk Island not far from the Washington Avenue Bridge. He had been kidnapped, robbed, and killed in a “caveman-style killing”, this according to prosecutor Bill Marshall. The women had killed him by beating him with rocks. Later the prosecutor said that the man, Donald James Fish, had traveler’s checks and cash stolen from him. Police said the motive was robbery.

“Shortly after the slaying” the women were arrested. During this arrest it was found that they were driving a stolen vehicle from the Salem area.

Flash forward to May 1997. Tracy Lee Poirier is temporarily transferred to the Coos County Jail and enters into a romantic relationship with one of her guards, Pamela Kay Trimble. Even after Poirier is transferred back to the Womens Correctional Center she and Trimble continue to correspond.

In July 1998 Trimble quits her job after Coos County officials find out that she was still corresponding with Poirier and they had informed her of an impending investigation. She would have been fired if it was proven that there was private communication between the two women. Later, it was verified in the news agencies that Trimble did believe she was in love with Poirier and she had conspired to help her escape from prison by trying to get tools to her while incarcerated.

Poirier was found missing from her jail cell on August 28, 1998 after a routine breakfast time check. Apparently, she had squeezed through her jail cell window that had been pried from the outside by Trimble. Then she fled the prison on foot through a newly created hole in the fencing installed at the perimeter of the prison. She had to cross Mill Creek on foot before she could get into Trimble’s red pick-up truck. The pick up was found abandoned two days after the escape was made.

This escape led to a month long road trip where the two women, using the assumed names of Robin and Ciara Marcel, lied their way from Oregon to Providence, Rhode Island. First they headed to San Francisco but, they left San Francisco August 31 and arrived in Providence via bus on September 3. They told folks that they had left Washington state and that Poirier was escaping an abusive husband.

The FBI and California State Police assisted in looking for the women while they were on the lam.

Finally, the two women were caught on Sept 28, 1998 in Rhode Island after being recognized. A television show, “America’s Most Wanted,” had ran the story in order to help law enforcement.

---
“Baby Doe” – Cold Case Case # 040491-0016

On April 4, 1991 at 10:00 AM Nags Head Officers were dispatched to the 8600 block of East Tides Drive in reference to a deceased infant in the trash can rack. When officers responded, the found the mummified body of an infant. An autopsy revealed the infant was Caucasian with blond hair. The infant was approximately 5-7 pounds at birth and 18-19 inches in length. The sex is unknown due to the condition of the body when it was discovered. The estimated age of the infant is less than 3 month. It is estimated the body was placed in the trash rack in February.

The autopsy suggests that the baby was killed with an object jammed into it's throat (death record says hair curler) which caused asphyxiation.

A forthcoming documentary suggests a Hobart woman who's serving a life sentence in prison for her role in two killings may have been a serial killer who also fed the remains of her dismembered lover to neighbors at a barbecue in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Investigation Discovery, a crime-themed cable network that reaches 85 million U.S. households, will air the true crime thriller "Dead North" about Kelly Cochran, a Northwest Indiana woman who pleaded guilty to the 2016 murder of her husband, Jason Cochran, at their home on the 7100 block of Mississippi Street of Hobart.

Cochran told Hobart police she injected her husband with heroin and smothered him with a pillow as revenge for the murder of her lover Christopher Regan, who she lured to her other home in Iron River, Michigan, with the promise of sex. Her husband burst out of the basement and shot Regan in the head with a .22 caliber rifle during the act, which the couple had plotted after making a "pact to kill off anyone involved in extramarital affairs," according to the documentary.

"Dead North" reveals that former Iron River police chief Laura Frizzo investigated whether Kelly Cochran had as many as nine victims.

The upcoming show follows Frizzo as her investigation of missing person Regan leads her "down a rabbit hole that alludes to cannibalism, reveals human remains and uncovers a deadly love triangle," according to Investigation Discovery.
---https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...h-noisy-pagan/
Adruid witch was attacked and stabbed by his neighbours after they had enough of his noisy pagan rituals, a court heard.

Mark and Anne Denyer attacked John Bennett as he conducted his latest back garden ceremony, which involved chanting and rhythmic beating of drums - something he did every full moon.

Denyer exchanged insults over the fence with Mr Bennett, who goes by the Pagan name Bearheart, before storming round to his bungalow with his wife

Mrs Denyer, 52, armed herself with an umbrella which she used to hit the bearded druid over the head with while her 56-year-old husband had grabbed a carving knife from the kitchen and made a "short jab" with it towards his victim.

Because Mr Bennett weighs 22 stone and has a "big belly" the blade didn't penetrate his abdomen and he suffered superficial injuries.
But fellow residents spoke of the strange noises and smells that sometimes wafted from Mr Bennett's garden.

One neighbour, who didn't want to be named, said: "We sometimes heard odd, not normal, music and smells like joss sticks and things. John has a personalised number plate for his car that says 666, which is a bit worrying.

Mary Agnes Gross is the daughter of fifty-five-year-old Marlys Thomas. When Marlys was twenty, she left her husband to raise her daughter on her own. In 1962, she moved to Minnesota to be close to her mother. On June 12, 1962, she went into labor, but after she gave birth, Marlys was told that her daughter died shortly after being born. Marlys had been sedated during the delivery, but she does have vague images of her daughter moving. While being wheeled out of her hospital room, Marlys passed a bassinet which held Mary Agnes. She asked to see her daughter, and when she was shown her, Marlys did not believe her baby was deceased. Mary Agnes was not purple and looked as if she were sleeping, not dead. She also had marks on her head from the forceps that the doctor used during delivery. Marlys noticed that her daughter had long, full dark brown hair. Furthermore, the hospital did not seem interested in an autopsy to explain how her daughter died nor allowed her photos of her daughter's body. Her mother was also not allowed to take pictures of the baby at the funeral home.

Soon after Mary Agnes's supposed death, a close friend of Marlys, Judy Voges, came to see the body of the baby and did not believe that it was young Mary Agnes. Judy did not see any marks on the baby's head, and the hair on the baby was light brown, and that there was not much of it; this was the opposite of what Marlys saw. Although Marlys was too sick for her baby's funeral, her mother did attend and noticed another family she did not know in attendance. There was only one fresh grave in the area. It was claimed that another family had lost an infant the same day her daughter died.
That infant was named Pamela Rae Dickey. A week after the funeral, Marlys was well enough to visit her daughter's grave. Even though there was apparently another baby that died, there was only one grave there. Three months after "losing" her daughter, Marlys received a photograph of an unidentified family, that included a husband, wife, and three children, one of which was a newborn baby girl. There was no letter or return address. When Marlys looked at the photograph, she felt that the baby looked just like her estranged husband, Mary Agnes's father. She did not recognize the people in the photo, nor did anyone in her family. She believed that someone was trying to tell her that her daughter was alive.

One year later, Marlys bought a headstone for her daughter's grave, but found that the stone had been placed a few feet off to the side. Though she moved away, Marlys periodically visited her daughter's grave. On one visit in 1989, she was shocked to find Pamela's gravestone placed atop her daughter's grave. Marlys questioned the funeral director and he said that her daughter was not buried there.
Marlys began doing more research into her daughter's supposed death. Marlys discovered that Pamela had passed away just a few hours before Mary Agnes, on the same day in the same hospital. Also, they were buried on the same day. Marlys was surprised to find her ex-husband's last name (Gross) written in the corner of one of Pamela's funeral papers. Even more puzzling, hospital records stated that Mary Agnes was healthy at birth, but the death certificate said that she had never drawn a breath. The birth certificate said that she was born at 6:23PM, but the death certificate said she died at 6:20PM, three minutes before she was born.
Marlys asked Pamela's mother Margaret for help, but she preferred not to disturb her daughter's grave. Nonetheless, Marlys had to make sure that Mary Agnes's body had not been moved without her knowledge. In November 1996, Marlys had the grave below her daughter's headstone exhumed. The remains were old, but DNA testing was able to be done. The tests confirmed that the child buried there was not Mary Agnes Gross. Also, the tests confirmed that the remains were not Pamela Dickey's either. Marlys showed the photographs her mother took of Mary Agnes's casket to Margaret Dickey. Margaret identified the casket as Pamela's and that her husband had bought it. She also said that another family was at her daughter's funeral that day; the family was Marlys's family.

Marlys now believes that Pamela is buried underneath her own tombstone and that another baby was buried where Mary Agnes was supposed to be. Marlys now believes that because she was a young, single mother that the hospital decided to give Mary to another family, which was in the picture sent to her. She hopes that she will one day find her daughter. Mary Agnes was born on June 16, 1962, at Worthington Regional Hospital in Worthington, Minnesota.

---http://www.bakersfield.com/archives/police-went-to-angelo-mendoza-s-apartment-shortly-before-he/article_16ba906c-d0fd-5081-8e0c-6d8d56ff1ffd.html
In May 2009, 34-year-old Angelo Mendoza Sr. went on what may have been a PCP-induced spree of nightmarish acts, the worst of which included biting his four-year-old son’s left eye out of his face and maiming the other. But that wasn’t the end of it for Mendoza Sr. After mangling his son’s face, he made his way to the backyard of an empty house, chained himself to a tree, and asked a neighbor to “look into the Sun and pray with him.” He then began hacking at his own legs with an ax and a ceramic plate. He later tried to tell police that he and his son had been victims of the Mexican Mafia.

Frightened by his father’s crazed state, four-year-old Angelo Mendoza Jr. attempted to hide behind a large dresser, where neighbors later found him naked and unconscious. He shook violently when he awoke as police arrived, and after being taken to a hospital in Fresno, California, he told a volunteer, “My daddy ate my eyes.”

Angelo Mendoza Sr. was charged with mayhem, torture, and child cruelty. In February 2011, however, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

The retrial of Jackie M. Roubideaux, accused of first-degree murder in the 1976 suffocation of a three-year-old Lawton girl, begins Monday in Comanche County District Court here.

A four-week trial early last year involving testimony from 64 witnesses ended in a mistrial when the jury could not reach a verdict.

Comanche County District Attorney Dick W. Tannery said the investigations of the girl's suffocation and a similar infant death in 1977 have been the most extensive in the county's history.

Miss Roubideaux, who was charged in October 1979, is accused of locking Mary Elizabeth Carpitcher and her twin sister, Augustine Lena "Tina" Carpitcher, in an abandoned refrigerator in April 1976. Tina survived.

The children had disappeared from their maternal grandmother's home.

Tina and the body of her twin sister were found two days later after other children playing nearby heard Tina's cries. She said she stayed alive by breathing through a small hole in the refrigerator.

Tina, now 10 years old, has been asked 13 times to recall in court her ordeal in the refrigerator. She testified before three judges in an adult certification hearing, a preliminary hearing and the first trial. She is expected to be the key witness for the prosecution again.

Tannery said the state also alleges Miss Roubideaux is responsible for the death of 19-month-old Nima Louise Carter, who was abducted from her Lawton home in October 1977. After a 23-day search, the child's body was found in a refrigerator inside a vacant, dilapidated duplex about a mile from where the Carpitcher children were discovered.

Michael W. Ryan is just about as deplorable a person as you can find. During the 1980s, he was a leader of a religious white supremacist group, which focused on the evilness of Jews, the destruction of authority, and the inferiority of other races. This alone makes him pretty terrible, but the reason for his imprisonment is what will really make you queasy.

In 1982, Ryan was arrested for the murder of five-year-old Luke Stice, the son of one of his followers, as well as the murder of another member of his society named James Thimm. Reports indicated that Ryan had, over the course of several days, abused the child (including forcing him to have sex with his father) before killing him. Ryan then beat Thimm, forced him to have sexual intercourse with a goat, and then eventually skinned him while he was still alive. Thim eventually died when Ryan stomped on his skinned and bleeding chest.

It's not surprising that Ryan was sentenced to death, though he died on death row in 2015 before his execution.

One night in 1979 Barre Kallan Monigold went outside to turn his car light off and never returned."Monigold was last seen at a friend's apartment complex in the 3900 block of Old Bullard Road in Tyler, Texas on June 17, 1979. He had been on a date that night and he and his date had gone to his friend's second-floor apartment and fallen asleep on the floor.

Between 1:00 and 1:30 a.m., Monigold's friend woke him up to tell him that the dome light in his car, a blue 1978 Monte Carlo, was on. Monigold went outside to turn the light off and never returned. While he was gone, his friend was in the kitchen, which overlooked the parking lot; the car was thirty to forty feet away.

Monigold's friend didn't hear any unusual noises. After about five minutes he went outside and called for Monigold, but Monigold was gone. The Monte Carlo's driver's side door was found unlocked and there were no indications of a struggle.

Monigold left all his clothing and personal belongings behind, and he also left money in his bank account. He worked as a car salesman at King Chevrolet at the time of his disappearance. He had studied karate and could have defended himself if attacked.

After his disappearance there were persistent rumors that he had been murdered, and another story that he had fled to Jamaica after a tipster offered up Monigold's phone number there, but little evidence is available in his case.Some individuals claimed to have witnessed Barre being forced into another vehicle although these claims were never proven. A big theory was that Barre was killed by a jealous ex-boyfriend. The girl he was dating had just ended a relationship that was described as volatile. A different man later confessed to the murder although it turned out to be false. It remains unsolved.
--https://counteverymystery.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-murder-of-terry-sutter.html

On the day of September 1st, 1973 15 year old Terry Sutter spent the day mowing the lawns. His mother had forgotten to pick him up, so he had walked home. He had wanted to spend that night at the movies and bowling alley with his friends. So his mother brought him to town, and dropped him off in Frankfort, Michigan. He was to stay with his Grandmother and his curfew was at 11 pm.

His parent's were shocked to hear that Terry didn't stay the night let alone arrive at his grandmothers house. He wasn't a difficult type of kid. He was the type who understood curfews and never broke them. This worried his family and they went out to search for him. The police did not take the family seriously as they believed he was hiding out so he didn't have to go to school.

That afternoon though Terry's body was found on the beach of Lake Michigan by a tourist. It was initially believed he had maybe died from a fall from a cliff and into Lake Michigan. It was found that his lungs were not filled with water, but instead with sand. Pointing towards being murdered. It's possible that his face was held down in sand and he suffocated to death. His neck and head were covered in bruises and his eyes were filled with sand.

Somebody then began to vandalize the poor 15 year olds grave. His head stone would get vandalized, flower pots put there for flowers were broken and even the bush planted there by an older sister was ripped out. Eventually it was decided Terry would lie in an unmarked grave as they removed the head stone.

Violet Constance Jessop (2 October 1887 – 5 May 1971) was an ocean liner stewardess and nurse who is known for surviving the disastrous sinkings of both the RMS Titanic and her sister ship, the HMHS Britannic, in 1912 and 1916, respectively. In addition, she had been on board the RMS Olympic, the eldest of the three sister ships, when it collided with a British warship in 1911.
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In 1912, R. Norris Williams survived the Titanic disaster after swimming onto a collapsible lifeboat. But since his legs had been submerged in freezing water for several hours, they were so frostbitten that doctors said they had no choice but to amputate. Williams refused amputation, opting instead to walk around every two hours despite the pain. It worked, and he went on to win several tennis world championships.
The first ship to reach the site of the sinking, the CS Mackay-Bennett, found so many bodies that the embalming supplies aboard were quickly exhausted. Health regulations required that only embalmed bodies could be returned to port. Captain Larnder of the Mackay-Bennett and undertakers aboard decided to preserve only the bodies of first class passengers, justifying their decision by the need to visually identify wealthy men to resolve any disputes over large estates. As a result, many third class passengers and crew were buried at sea. Larnder identified many of those buried at sea as crew members by their clothing, and stated that as a mariner, he himself would be contented to be buried at sea.
--
The White Star Line was nothing if not frugal. Due to a clause worked into their contracts, every employee aboard the ship was fired the second that the Titanic began to sink. The company would not, after all, pay wages for employees who were wasting their time drowning.

Afterward, the families of the dead were informed that they would have to pay the freight cost if they wanted their loved ones’ bodies. Most couldn’t afford it, of course, and so today, many of those who died have memorials instead of graves.

Things were far worse for the musicians. The band who heroically played on while the ship sank were completely abandoned. They were registered as independent contractors, which meant that White Star Line legally didn’t have to do anything for them. The other crew members’ families got survivor benefits, but the families of the band didn’t get a penny.

That doesn’t mean they got nothing, though. The families of the band were sent one memento: a bill for the cost of the uniforms.
--
As adult male passengers were unable to enter a lifeboat during the Titanic’s sinking, a father was forced to place his two boys into a boat, while he remained aboard the ship. The young boys could only speak French and had no belongings to call their own, so their identity was a mystery on the rescue ship, RMS Carpathia. Newspapers commented on the story of “the Two Waifs of the Sea” and published a photo of the boys to reach their family in France.

Meanwhile, a mother was desperately searching for her two boys, who had disappeared without a trace. The story of the two waifs soon reached her in Nice, France. After describing her children to child services, the boys were later identified as four-year-old Michel and two-year-old Edmond. The boys were abducted by their father, Michel Navratil, who was traveling aboard the ship under the pseudonym of “Mr. Hoffman” and was hoping to start a new life with his children in the US.

When Abraham Saloman realized that the Titanic was going down, he knew what he had to do. Acting quickly, he grabbed a lunch menu—because he had to get a souvenir.

Saloman and four other millionaires then made their way to the lifeboats where they saw a boat with room for 40 people. If they had to flee a sinking ship, though, they wanted to be comfortable doing it. So one of them, Cosmo Duff-Gordon, bribed some crew members to take the millionaires alone and let them stretch out their legs a bit.

https://www.denverpost.com/2011/09/16/2-accused-of-grim-real-life-weekend-at-bernies/
When Robert Young and Mark Rubinson found their friend dead in his home, they decided to take him out for one last night on the town at his expense. They threw their friend in the back seat of their car, took his dead body barhopping through three separate venues, and closed off the night by blowing $400 of their dead friend’s money at a strip club.

Unlike "Weekend at Bernie's", they didn’t actually drag their friend’s body into the club. They left him in the back seat of the car throughout the whole fiasco. So it’s not entirely clear why they bothered dragging his corpse around at all.

When the night was over, they called the cops to report that their friend was dead. But since real life isn’t a raunchy ‘80s comedy movie, the police didn’t just laugh it off. The paired ended up in jail on a pile of charges, including abusing a corpse.

​​​​​​​---http://charleyproject.org/case/april-irene-vlk
​​​​​​​
​​​​​​​On September 12, 1991 a church dinner being held in the Seaside Villas in Hilton Head, South Carolina was interrupted when a crying, bleeding woman entered. Believed to be April Irene Vlk, witnesses reported that she was barefoot, bleeding from the feet, and appeared terrified. Vlk asked for materials to make a sign to hitchhike off the island. After writing 'Washington DC' on a piece of cardboard, Vlk was given $20 to buy some shoes at a nearby Wal-Mart and left. After leaving the church, she vanished. Her father reported her missing on September 17, 1991 and initial investigative reports state that on the 12th Vlk had been involved in an argument with her live-in boyfriend, who told her to leave the apartment.

It isn't known whether or not she successfully hitchhiked off the island or what happened to her. Her Doe Network profile lists her disappearance as 'Involuntary' and there is very little information available on the case. Her DNA is stored in the National Missing Persons DNA databank and there is a $2500 reward being offered for any information leading to an arrest in the case.

Was Vlk killed by her boyfriend or the person who picked her up? Did she ever leave the island? What caused her to enter the church in such a hysteric state?

Around midnight on March 28, 1994, LAPD homicide detectives arrived at an apartment building on the corner of 49th and Figueroa streets. The two-story building was a brothel, and John Jones, a pimp who ran prostitutes from apartments on the first floor, lorded over the property from upstairs.

Hours earlier, a man named Felipe Gonzales Angeles had walked up to the locked door and asked to see a prostitute he knew named Melinda. The man standing guard said Melinda was busy, and as Angeles returned to his car, he was accosted by three gunmen and shot to death.

Police questioned Jones, who told them he saw the faces of three men as they shot up at him from below while they fled.

Detectives had little to go on, but weeks later a tip led them to Cole.

By 1994, Cole, now 19, was selling crack at the motels along the Figueroa Corridor, a pistol tucked into his jeans. Sometimes he ran into his boyhood friend Obie Anthony, a fellow member of the Nine Deuce Hoover Crips who also sold drugs there.

The two were in jail when they learned they had been charged with murdering Angeles.

At the trial, they insisted they were innocent, and their defense attorneys argued that they were home hung over after drinking heavily the night before at a friend’s birthday party. No physical evidence connected the pair to the crime.

The prosecution’s case relied almost entirely on eyewitnesses who identified them as the shooters. The star witness was Jones, the pimp, who said he was sure they were the men he saw.

The verdict came back guilty on all counts. Cole and Anthony were given life in prison without the possibility of parole.
\
The blade came from below and nicked his neck. Cole stumbled away. He looked at the face of his attacker and backed off. The yard was silent. He wiped at the dribbling blood.

It was Devil.

Eddie Eugene Clark was a respected elder in Cole’s old gang and neighborhood, and a shot-caller among the black inmates at Calipatria State Prison in Imperial County.

On that morning in November 2000, Cole had known revenge could be on its way: He had refused an order from Clark to take the fall for a higher-ranking inmate who was caught with a knife.

Fear is currency in prison, and after six years of his life sentence, Cole saw what happened to those who allowed their fear or weakness to be known. They were raped, beaten, stabbed or killed. Failure to follow orders from above carried the same punishments.

He knew Devil would come after him again.

Cole dug out a knife from the yard that he fashioned from parts of a stapler, and hid it in his pants.

Minutes later, he dug the knife into Clark’s neck.

For a second time, Cole was charged with murder. This time, he was subject to the death penalty because of the 1995 conviction. That drew the interest of the California Innocence Project, which reviews inmates’ claims of wrongful conviction.

Cole argued that he acted in self-defense.

“I play it over and over in my head, trying to figure out a way around me killing him,” he recalled. “I was going to kill him, or he was going to kill me.”

Cole pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years on top of his life sentence. He was sent to solitary confinement.
The California Innocence Project filed a habeas corpus petition to have Cole’s murder conviction in the brothel case thrown out. The group argued that Jones, the pimp, who had a previous conviction for manslaughter and was a police informant, had fabricated most of his testimony. A judge looked at the evidence and agreed.

After 16 years in prison, and 10 years in solitary confinement, Cole was free — but not fully exonerated.
--------------

A day after Byron David Smith shot and killed two teens who broke into his Little Falls, Minnesota home, he admitted to police that he shot the intruder more times than was necessary.

Less than a month before, Smith reported a break-in, claiming burglars had absconded thousands of dollars worth of gold coins and sentimental items such as medals he earned serving as an airman in Vietnam. He claimed to have been victim to several other break-ins over the preceding year, and he felt so insecure in his own home that he had resorted to carrying a holstered pistol -- even when simply doing household chores.

Clearly, he imagined a day when he would have to defend himself in his own home, and that day arrived on Thanksgiving 2012. Smith saw teens Nick Brady and Haile Kifer casing his property and peeking into windows. He retreated to his basement and waited. When Brady broke in and ventured down the steps, Smith shot and killed him. When Kiefer followed ten minutes later, Smith shot and killed her too.

To provide some clarity regarding how Smith exceeded the limits of the Castle Doctrine, we can look at testimony given by pathologist Dr. Kelly Mills at trial. She said Brady was shot three times -- once in the shoulder, once in the abdomen, and the final shot went through Brady's palm and into the side of his head.

As for Kifer, Smith shot her six times -- but it was the final shot that caused the most concern -- a single shot placed under her chin.

In self-defense, every shot counts. In order for a shooting to be justified, the first and the last shot must all be considered reasonable compared to the threat.

The first shots Smith fired, as the Intruders each descended into his basement, may very well have been justified. But once the teens had been shot, tumbled down the stairs, and we're spread prostrate on the floor, the immediate threat they once posed vanished. The final shots -- the one in Brady's head, and the one in Keifer’s chin -- weren't necessary to end the danger. They were excessive, and in court, prosecutors described the final shots as executions.

Two days earlier, on Friday, the Cardinal Glennon Medical Center called police to investigate the boy’s injuries after he was admitted to the hospital. Not only did the hot water scald the baby’s skin so badly that it burned portions of his skin off, but he also suffered cuts to his liver, a blood clot near his kidneys and a severe brain injury. The baby underwent surgery for the brain injury.

Patrick allegedly told investigators he put the boy in a sink of hot water, police say. Doctors do not think the injuries were accidental, according to a report by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It’s not clear what Patrick’s relationship is to the baby boy.

​​​​​​​In July 2011, ten-year-old Ame Deal died after she was stuffed in a padlocked 78- by 30- by 36-centimeter (31 x 12 x 14 in) footlocker by her family and left outside overnight in sweltering desert temperatures. Why did they do this? Because she took a Popsicle without permission.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was not an isolated incident. Ame lived with her parents and other relatives, including 11 other children, in a filthy house in Phoenix, Arizona. She seemed to function as the family scapegoat, as she was the only child in the family to suffer such abuse. The other children even intentionally got her in trouble. The range of “punishments” Ame suffered included things like being beaten with a wooden paddle, also known to the family as “the butt buster,” crushing cans with her bare feet, eating dog feces if she missed any while cleaning up the yard, walking along pavement in 46-degree-Celsius (114 °F) temperatures, and being forced to do backbends for hours at a time.

Being locked inside the relatively tiny footlocker (Ame was 122 centimeters [4′] tall and weighed under 27 kilograms [60 lb]) was not an unusual occurrence for Ame, either. Sometimes, her relatives would kick or flip the box, throw it in the pool, or sit on it after forcing her into the cramped space. Witnesses say they could hear her inside, crying.

On the night of her death, one of her relatives forced her into a backbend for over two hours, physically putting her back into the position if she fell. He then told her to run around their yard in the 39-degree-Celsius (103 °F) heat before locking her inside the airtight container, in which she suffocated to death.

The adults in the house were sentenced to prison time ranging from ten to 76 years. John Allen, the man who locked Ame in the box, and his wife Samantha Allen, Ame’s cousin and one of her key abusers, were sentenced to death.

Could be a good source of new cases to write about.I've bootlegged the whole series on DVD...and most are up on Amazon. I try my best to veer away from them unless the cases are obscure. Watching this at night still chills my blood!! ----------

Murky water laps gently on a secluded stretch of the Severn River bank where Christina Kettlewell’s floral pajama-clad body was found seven decades ago, lying facedown in a shallow pool.

Investigators suspect the Toronto woman was already dead by the time the final licks of fire sputtered out among the charred remains of her honeymoon cottage just up the hill. There were no burn marks or signs of violence on her body, a post-mortem later showed.

An inquest into the 22-year-old woman’s death unravelled a confounding tale of elopement, life insurance policies, a possible love triangle, suicide letters, and attempted murder.

A sexually dysfunctional lumberjack, Dale fought his impotence with violence and liquor.

On September 5, 1970, tanked up with booze and hatred, he drove to his wife's relatives' house where he killed a women and her seven-year-old daughter. Feeling a bit hungry, he slit the young girl's gut and munched on the half-digested food in her entrails.

He then went to a neighbor's house and killed all six inside, sodomizing an eight-year-old girl as she died. Feeling hungry again, he returned to the first house and stole the corpse he previously had for dinner.

Woman Swept Away At Sea Reappears 1.5 Years Later On The Same Beach, Triggering Speculation Of The Supernatural

What is even more baffling is she was still wearing the same clothes she had on when she disappeared 18 months earlier.

Nining Sunarsih, a woman in her early 50s was holidaying in Sukabumi in West Java last January.

She was reportedly enjoying a dip in the waters off Citepus Beach when a strong wave swept her away, carried out by strong currents into the open sea.

Local media reports at that time report eyewitnesses saying they heard the woman screaming and waving her hands for help, Suara.com reports.

After several days of searching for her body to turn up, authorities called off the search and pronounced her dead.

Accordng to DailyMailciting Kompas.com, Sunarsih's father began having dreams telling him that she was somehow back on the same beach that she disappeared that fateful day and waiting for rescuers to discover her.

After a few days of the same recurring dream, the man finally went back to the beach with his family and started combing the area.

To their surprise, they managed to locate Sunarsih some 500 metres away from where she had disappeared and more astoundingly, still wearing the same clothes she wore the day she disappeared.

​​​​​​​Her family took her home and alerted the authorities. The mysterious incident had apparently not left any visible physical damage on Sunarsih but she is reportedly unable to talk, although eating and drinking normally.

Police have started investigations into Sunarsih's strange reappearence.

"We ask people not to be influenced by information that is not yet clear," Sukabumi City Police Chief Susatyo Purnomo was quoted by the UK news daily.

A fire leveled the Bryant family home ... "a week before Christmas" ... on this property in rural Mauston.

"It was just a great big farmhouse."

9 year-old Sharon watched the fire from a school window.

"They wouldn't let me go out. I could see the smoke coming out of the house and the flames."

Sharon's siblings 5-year-old Forrest, 4-year-old Ricky Jean and 18-month-old Elizabeth were at home with their grandparents.

"Grandma took care of us. She was more of a mother to us than our own mother."

Newspaper articles at the time tell of a dramatic 2nd story rescue of the children's grandpa by his elderly wife. But Ricky Jean, or Jeannie, was feared dead.

"I think it bothered him all of his life because I don't think he stuttered before the fire."

Sharon's brother, Forrest has told his sisters how he remembers leaving Elizabeth and Jeannie outside when a woman "... he said she was blonde ..." pulled up in a newer-looking car and told Forrest to get help. But, he says the woman sent him to a house down the road instead of one nearby.

"And when he come back... Jeannie was gone," Sharon says.

Investigators never could find any solid proof of Jeannie's death. The children's father, Raymond Bryant, searched the ruins himself.

"He was ashes from one end to the other and his face had ashes on just digging in trying to find her."

... Never truly believing he'd lost a daughter ...

"To his dying day, he said Jeannie, he didn't feel Jeannie was in that fire."

Sharon and her siblings began to wonder as well.

"None of us had the same story," Sharon says, "One of us was told she went through the stairway."

"Another one, they said, they just couldn't find Jeannie."

Sharon and her sister began a search to find Jeannie, seeking out people like Irene Carlson, a neighbor who supposedly followed Forrest back to the Bryant home the day of the fire.

"And she says, you know that poor little guy, I had to practically run to keep up to him, he took off so fast."

"And my grandma, I guess, finally says ... well she isn't here. She's with relatives. You might as well go home."

Carlson's revelation, years after their mother -- Opal Bryant died -- added to the mystery surrounding her life and her relationship with her own mother, the grandma who raised them.

"My grandma never went anywhere. She was always covering up stuff my mom would do."

Sharon says throughout her childhood Opal would leave the family.
"She was never home. As soon as my dad go, about an hour later, she would take off."

Then, when the parents split, Opal moved to Washington state, where she re-married. Sharon stayed in Wisconsin with her father. She says Opal would return to the Midwest for weeks at a time though never revealing her exact whereabouts.

"She went and seen somebody... "

... Perhaps Ricky Jean?

Five years after the child's reported death, a cousin traveling through Georgia sent this postcard to Jeannie, where the family was living in Wisconsin. Sharon found it in her mother's belongings.

Sharon's sister, Liz says shortly before her mother's death, Opal returned to the Midwest with a shirt and coveralls. The clothing -- belonging to Jeannie -- was on a clothes line the day of the fire. But when Opal came back to Washington, she no longer had the items. Liz believes Jeannie is somewhere in the region, and she thinks the clothing could be key in finding her.

The family's already tested one woman who proved not to be a match. Meanwhile, Juneau County investigators say a flood destroyed the sheriff's departments original records.

Twisted Bernadette McNeilly, 55, subjected 16-year-old Suzanne Capper to a shocking ordeal in one of Britain’s most sadistic murders.

The teenager was stripped, plunged into a bath of disinfectant and forced to listen to recordings of McNeilly imitating Chucky, the demonic doll from horror film Child’s Play.

Over petty grievances Suzanne was lured to Jean Powell's house - into which McNeilly and her children had also moved - where her head was shaved and she was beaten with fists and implements for hours before being locked in a cupboard. At one point McNeilly was alone in the house when a male who ended up participating called to buy drugs. McNeilly - seemingly on a high and exhibiting gleeful delight - threw some keys to him and laughingly told him to look in the cupboard. There he saw the battered and shaven headed Suzanne cowering with fear.
McNeilly grew concerned that Suzanne's cries might disturb her children, so Suzanne was forcibly transferred to McNeilly's now unused house where she was tied naked and spreadeagled to an upturned bed. Out of earshot of anyone but her persecutors, the tortures now escalated. Over the next six days Suzanne was injected with amphetamines, starved, had loud rave music played to her on full volume through headphones all day and night, and was regularly whipped and beaten. She was also burned with cigarettes, not released to use the toilet, and had raw disinfectant poured over her whilst being scrubbed with stiff brushes so severely that her skin was removed. During each torture session, in which the brutality escalated as the participants tried to outdo each other, McNeilly in particular laughed with pleasure, and delighted in taunting her victim with the lines from a horror film - something about Chucky coming to play - before initiating each session of torture. At some point one of the males involved pulled out some of Suzanne's teeth with pliers, as Bernadette McNeilly and Jean Powell watched.

Realising that they'd serve serious jail time if Suzanne were ever released now, they decided to kill her, driving her in a stolen car to some remote woods 15 miles away. En route, Bernadette giggled with anticipation at what was to follow. When they arrived, Suzanne was forced to walk to the chosen spot where McNeilly poured five litres of petrol over her and repeatedly attempted to ignite her. Ultimately one of the males did so with a lighter. Bernadette laughed as her victim screamed in agony and started singing some song with the lyrics "Burn, baby, burn" from the song "Disco Inferno". She and others continued singing such songs whilst laughing and joking on their return - stopping en route to buy some drinks.

After being spotted by a passing motorist, she was taken to hospital and survived for four days – long enough to name her attackers and land McNeilly – then 24 – and three of her five evil sidekicks life sentences.

Ye Meng Yuan was 16 years old in 2013 when she boarded Asiana Airlines Flight 214. She was on her way to Southern California from China for summer camp. That’s when the nightmare began.

Her plane crashed because it came in too low and slow. It had a rough landing just before the runway. Yuan did survive the crash, but she was injured. After she came out of the plane, she was lying on the ground, only to be run over by a fire truck.

As a result, Ye Meng Yuan died. The firefighters were on their way to extinguish some fires that had broken out and hit Yuan on the way. There were three fatalities, including Yuan, from the crash and its aftermath.
Many lawsuits were filed against the airline, including one from the parents of Ye Meng Yuan. However, two years after the incident, the parents dropped the lawsuit. Their lawyer stated, “The parties have reached a confidential settlement on mutually agreeable terms.”